P. 169. Digby.—Sir Kenelm Digby's 'observations' are generally printed with Religio Medici, although in a letter to Sir T. Browne, who had written to him on the subject, he explained that the hastily set down notes did not merit the press, and would 'serve only for a private letter, or a familiar discourse with lady-auditors'.
To Sir Thomas Browne, 'a library,' says Coleridge, 'was a living world, and every book a man, absolute flesh and blood.'
P. 170. Boswell.—'Who is he that is now wholly overcome with idleness, or otherwise involved in a labyrinth of worldly cares, troubles, and discontents, that will not be much lightened in his mind by reading of some enticing story, true or feigned, where as in a glass he shall observe what our forefathers have done, the beginnings, ruins, ends, falls of commonwealths, private men's actions displayed to the life, &c. Plutarch therefore calls them secundas mensas et bellaria, the second courses and junkets, because they were usually read at noblemen's feasts.'—R. Burton. Anatomy.
P. 171. Rabelais.—
Whence is thy learning? Hath thy toil
O'er books consumed the midnight oil?—J. Gay.
P. 171. Wilson.—This is often taken to be an antique. As a matter of fact, Mr. John Wilson, a London bookseller, stated to Mr. Austin Dobson that he wrote the lines as a motto for one of his second-hand catalogues. Wilson, Mr. Dobson tells us, was amused at the vogue the lines eventually obtained.
P. 172. Chaucer.—This is the earlier version, and to be preferred to the later, in which the passage ends:
Farwel my book and my devocioun!
wel unethe=scarcely any.
P. 175. Tickle.—'Written in a fit of the gout.'